Pure linguistic PROMETHEE I and II methods for heterogeneous MCGDM problems

AbstractThe PROMETHEE methods basic principle is focused on a pairwise comparison of alternatives for each criterion, selecting a preference function type that often requires parameters in order to obtain a preference value. When a MCGDM problem is defined in an heterogeneous context, an adequate and common approach is to unify the involved information in linguistic values. However, for each criterion, there is a difficulty to select the specific preference function and define its parameters because they are expressed by crisp values in the unit interval, when the information involved in the problem has been unified into linguistic values. In this paper, a methodology for modeling linguistic preference functions in order to facilitate the selecting of each linguistic preference function type and the definition of its parameters is proposed, providing a more realistic definition of the criteria. Therefore, a generic linguistic preference function is proposed whose inputs and outputs are linguistic values. ...